Question:  What day do you believe is the true Sabbath?  I have looked up the word “Sabbath” in the dictionary and it means “Saturday”.

            Donna

Answer:  Dear Donna,

            Sabbath is Saturday.  Always has been.  But that’s not the question for Christians.  The question is – is the fourth commandment, as stated in the old covenant, binding and required for Christians today?

            If the answer is yes – then there is only one day to worship upon.  Saturday must be that day.  The Sabbath day has never been changed – i.e. from Saturday to Sunday.  No human or group of humans has the authority to “change” the day.  This is called the transference theory.  Accordingly, some Christians call Sunday the Sabbath, for they believe that early Christianity changed the day.  However, the Sabbath was never “changed” to Sunday.  Sunday is not the Sabbath.

            But, if the answer to the question “is the old covenant binding and required for Christians today?“ – is “no”, then we have an entirely different perspective.

            The ten commandments were all commented upon, reinforced, supported, further defined by Jesus and his disciples, and most importantly of all, by the cross.  Christians live by the new covenant, given to us by the blood of Christ.

            Nowhere in the New Testament is the fourth commandment required of Christians.  Yes, Christ kept it.  But, as a Jew what day would we have expected him to worship?  He did many other things as an observant Jew that are not normative for Christians.  That’s part of the meaning of the cross.  We see that liars and thieves are often mentioned as behaving in a manner that Christians (in whom Jesus lives) do not.  But we do not see “Sabbath breakers” included in what are called “sin lists” of the New Testament.  Neither do we see “Sabbath keeping” extolled as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, as a behavior that Christians will engage in.  We do not see this anywhere in the New Testament.

            Early Christians met on both Saturday and Sunday – Saturday because it was the cultural heritage of many early Jewish Christians, Sunday because it was the day of the resurrection.  Gradually Christians identified more with the resurrection than they did with Mount Sinai, and because the new covenant does not stipulate a weekly day of worship, they chose Sunday.

            In fact, the New Testament warns about keeping days, months, etc., -- any kind of calendar which in and of itself is thought to be “holy”.  The New Testament clearly teaches that Christians are not bound to the old covenant requirements, and warns that Christians should not let any human tell them otherwise.  It was for this reason that Christianity adopted a new liturgy, distancing itself from the old covenant days that were required, and choosing days that were memorials of the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht